Medium term planning in history at ﻿Key Stage 3

It is rare now to find history departments who do not use key questions to plan their history work/enquiries. The best ensure that the questions are phrased in a way that intrigues the pupils and whets their appetite. As a result of the National Strategy for the Foundation subjects about a decade ago, far greater attention is now being paid to the all-important learning objectives. However, these were often unhelpfully copied down by all pupils making a very dull start to the lesson and not really treating the issue of differentiation at all seriously. Methodology too is now discussed far more frequently but still in terms of a ‘great activity’ rather than answering the question ‘is this the best way of fulfilling that objectives?’. Against this background you could argue that there is little that is new left to say. What I offer here are a few hints based on my experience and a couple of examples to show how I think it ought to be done which act as a nice counterbalance to old QCA advice.

There is nothing sacred about formats for medium-term planning and I am not going to advocate one particular approach other than to say

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